The Mahones’ Finny McConnell has done things his way throughout almost a quarter-century in the music business. And he’s not about to start caving to others’ demands at this point in his life and career. McConnell is arguably one of the coolest, most cordial musicians in Canadian music. He has simply listened to his gut when it comes to taking the Celtic-punk band down paths many musicians can only dream of.

The past few years have been among the group’s most high-profile periods. Last year, the group was awarded the 2012 Independent Music Award for best punk album for their record The Black Irish. In 2010, the song “Paint The Town Red” landed in the award-winning film The Fighter.

Performing at Plan b Lounge in Moncton Friday, the band’s newest record Angels & Devils was created in a short three-week span. From his home in Montreal last week, McConnell says that the quick completion of Angels & Devils, the group’s eighth studio record, was important to help keep the momentum of the past few years going in their favour.

“We finished touring behind The Black Irish with a show in Dublin, Ohio on a Saturday night this past August. By Monday morning we were in the studio making Angels & Devils,” McConnell says. “We finished the record and then started touring the new album almost immediately. We have largely been on the road for the past six months, having played Moscow, Madrid and Paris to name just a few of the places we have played.

“We completed the new record so quickly because we were acutely aware of how much we’ve had going in our favour these past few years. It was great to see the way that people connected with The Black Irish. We wanted Angels & Devils to reflect a bigger and better band. I truly believe that we are a band that is getting better with age.”

For the past 23 years, the group’s albums have been relatively successful while the group has become renowned for their energy-packed, electrifying live show.

There have been a number of different musicians come and go from the Mahones since their inception, however, one thing has remained constant: McConnell along with his wife Katie McConnell, Dom Whelan, Sean Winter and Paul Mancuso have maintained a very hands-on approach to the Mahones for their entire career.

“The policy with the band has been that I am the singer-songwriter-producer of the band and despite the lineup rotating from time to time, it works fine at the end of the day. We are not the type of band like Blue Rodeo where there are two primary songwriters. I actually set the band up like that on purpose to help ensure our longevity,” he says. “Once you’re in the Mahones club, you’re in it for life. Sean left the band for a period of time to raise his children but then came back when the timing was right. It’s important that the band keep evolving and that we keep a good relationship going with the musicians who play with us.”

While some independent groups struggle with making ends meet while trying to live their dream, the Mahones seem to have mastered the practice. Touring, while time consuming, especially when your band tours as extensively as the Mahones, is very much a necessary evil in today’s music business.

A large part of the Mahones ongoing success could be attributed to the fact that McConnell has always been a forward-looking individual, using technology to the group’s advantage.

“It is very much an Internet market these days,” he says. “iTunes saved all of (us) because so many bands were having their music given away for free. But with people getting their music via iTunes, bands like us are getting paid again which is just amazing. Right now is a great time to be a musician or be in a band because we have all of these great tools at our disposal to help promote the group.”

Article published in the May 17, 2013 edition of the Times & Transcript

Exactly what is in the water down St. Andrews way? The small town seems to be a hotbed of talent having given rise to a number of prolific musicians including Owen Steele as well as Ryan LeBlanc.

LeBlanc is an East Coast Music Award winning musician who has developed a rather unique style of percussive guitar playing. LeBlanc is celebrating the release of his third full-length album Solitude with a number of shows throughout the province over the next week.

On Thursday May 16, Ryan performs a 6:30 p.m. timeslot at St. Andrews’s Paddlefest before moving onto Parkindale Hall for a 2:00 p.m. matinee on Sunday afternoon. Leblanc performs at Café Aberdeen in Moncton on Tuesday May 21 and then moves onto Fredericton’s Cedar Tree Café the following night.

LeBlanc spoke with Here Magazine earlier this week:

How did you develop your style of guitar playing?

Honestly, I developed my style by accident. I had been playing guitar for years and took an interest in playing congas. After having learned some conga-playing techniques, I decided to use the body of my acoustic guitar to learn hand percussion. There was one day that I was playing something on guitar and I subsequently added a few beats to the song using my guitar as a percussive instrument. I think it has allowed me to offer something a little more original in my approach to writing and playing music.

You made your new record with Moncton native Chris Colepaugh who in addition to music career of his own also performs with Roch Voisine. What inspired you to want to work with Chris?

Working with Chris was amazing. I have been a fan of his since pretty much forever and just love his playing and dedication to music. I was pretty confident that those qualities would carry over to the studio and indeed they did. In addition to being a total pro in the studio, he brought out the best in my performances.

Did the touring and promotion you’ve done in the three years leading up to this record lend themselves to the end result of Solitude?

My experience on stage in the last few years has helped me grow immensely more confident on stage. At the end of the day though, you just need to be yourself and stay grounded and true to what you believe in.

Article published in the May 16, 2013 edition of Here Magazine

The success experienced by Edmundston-born Roch Voisine has been dizzying. With a total of 22 records and millions of record sales to his credit, Voisine is now more than 25 years into his music career. He is arguably best known for the song ‘Helene,’ which was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

But Voisine’s career is much bigger than any one song.

Like Celine Dion, he has a not-so-secret weapon – he is able to sing in both French and English. This has allowed him to appeal to a wider range of audiences and has no doubt helped play a part in his remarkable career longevity as well.

Performing at Casino New Brunswick on Friday night, Roch fondly reminisced about his 25 years in music with The Times & Transcript last week.

‘It is so hard to believe that I’ve been at this for 25 years in Canada and basically 22 years outside of the country,’ Roch says. ‘It has been such a wild ride for me, touring France, Quebec, Canada – on top of the Juno Award wins and hosting the East Coast Music Awards. With the music business being what it is these days, the fact I have been able to hold in there for 25 or 30 years really is a miracle.’

Although Roch has remained a popular concert draw and has consistently sold records all over the world, he has experienced yet another burst of fame over the last five years.

The Americana album series, his tribute to timeless songs including Bob Dylan’s ‘Lay Lady Lay’, Willie Nelson’s ‘Always On My Mind’ and Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ resonated with his old fans while attracting a pile of new ones as well.

‘With the success of the Americana series, it felt a bit like career revitalization, for sure,’ Roch says. ‘It went over especially well with French Europe which was a bit of a surprise because they do not typically listen to English stuff at all. It was a surprise to radio hosts, critics and fans that I sang in English as they had no idea that I had this other side to my career. On top of that, the country-folk approach to music in French Europe is quite marginal. You’d have a better chance of success if you were playing jazz or blues music.

‘All of a sudden, because we had apparently picked the right mix of songs for the first Americana release, it completely blew up. All of a sudden, these legendary songs were accessible to a lot of people in Europe, much like country music is in America. Prior to those records, I had never done cover songs but every room that we played was filled up and all of a sudden, I was brought back into the mainstream.

‘You never really know what is going to connect with your audiences. Sometimes it can be one song, sometimes it is only one album. I was very lucky to have had such resounding success with the Americana releases.

Naturally, the popularity of Americana wasn’t limited to Europe. Canadian audiences greeted Roch and his band, of which Moncton native Chris Colepaugh is a part of, with open arms.

The most recent release from Roch Voisine is an album of duets, appropriately titled Duophonique. The album pairs up Voisine with a bevy of singing partners including Patricia Kaas, Lynda Lemay and Isabelle Boulay and together, they tackle Roch’s storied catalogue of music. Rather than simply rehashing the same song with a different voice, Roch shares that songs such as ‘Helene’ were completely rearranged and reimagined for the album.

‘The idea for Duophonique came from my European record company which wanted to do a special project to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the craziness that started in France,’ Roch says. ‘Instead of doing a strictly greatest hits package, we rearranged some of my older songs to be duets, backed by a symphonic orchestra.’

At the present time, Duophonique is exclusive to European audiences. However, Roch says that plans are already in the works to release a Canadian version of the record, which will feature French-Canadian duet partners. He expects the record to hit store shelves in late October or early November.

Giving a new life to his songs, some of which are more than 20 years old, was an exciting process for the singer.

‘A lot of the arrangements for the songs were totally changed and approached with a fresh view. It was a fun project to do and gave me a different way of looking at my songs. I am very happy with the way that the record turned out.’ With a quarter-century of entertaining already behind him, Roch is eagerly looking toward the future. 

Of course, part of the dilemma of having such a fruitful career is narrowing down exactly what songs to perform for audiences each night. He hopes that those who come out to Casino New Brunswick on Friday night will walk away from the show feeling as though they got their money’s worth.

‘People don’t have as much money as they used to,’ he says. ‘They are being more selective with where they are spending their money so my job is to make sure that they get their fill of the songs they want and expect to hear when they come to the show. We are covering a lot of ground on this tour, playing songs from virtually each of my records, from one era to another including a good portion ofAmericana songs in there.

‘This tour has been a lot of fun. I can easily say that I have the greatest fans in the world.’

Article published in the May 15, 2013 edition of the Times & Transcript

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Keith Harkin is best known as a member of the contemporary pop band Celtic Thunder. With that group, he has toured the world for at least six months a year for the past five-plus years since their debut effort was released.

It is now Harkin’s turn to shine as a solo artist. A native of Derry, Northern Ireland, the charismatic vocalist shows a slightly different side of his musical self with the release of his self-titled debut record. A collection of original material, alongside carefully selected covers of songs by Tom Waits, Van Morrison, George Harrison and Don Henley, Harkin is set to perform in the intimate confines of The Tide & Boar Gastropub in Downtown Moncton on Thursday evening.

Harkin tells The Times & Transcript that he relishes the opportunity to play in smaller venues like The Tide & Boar. While he is obviously grateful for the success that has greeted Celtic Thunder’s career, along with that success come larger audiences needing larger venues to accommodate their show.

“These shows that we are playing are definitely more intimate but I love playing them,” Keith says. “They are acoustic based and feature only me and one other guy performing, so naturally there is a lot of story-telling involved throughout the show. I am a music-lover first and foremost and actually grew up playing in bars, so playing these small venue gigs is second nature to me.”

Keith says that his parents had him singing from the age of four. Growing up in Derry, Keith mentions his city was one that was engrossed in music. He says that it would be more of a rarity to have someone in Derry not be musically inclined.

“You had to be good to get on stage in Derry and so I played all I could in the bars and clubs.”

Harkin would further refine his writing skills, composing and recording songs for Dha Theanga, an Irish program on the BBC in which he also performed in a lead role. Auditioning for Celtic Thunder at the age of 20, Keith saw the opportunity of joining the group as an eventual means to getting his own music heard.

“I joined Celtic Thunder as a solo artist, to have some fun but also to get my own music out there. This record has been six or seven years in the making. Given the success of Celtic Thunder, it has been a little tough to get the time to work with the band as well as work on my solo stuff. It is my job however, being on the road and spending months on tour. I want to be as successful as I can be and that isn’t going to happen if I am sitting at home.”

Keith was one of the first artists to be signed to Verve Records in the United States by label chairman David Foster. The Grammy-Award winning Foster also serves as the executive producer on Harkin’s album. Being given the musical seal of approval by Foster is not something that Harkin takes lightly.

“The man has so many gold and platinum awards hanging on the walls of his house. His success has just been amazing and seemingly endless.”

To bring his vision to life, Harkin went into the studio with Jochem van der Saag, the producer considered to be Foster’s right-hand man. The duo set out to make an intimate acoustic-based record that reflected Keith’s musical origins and ultimately, they succeeded.

With more than 14,500 miles travelled since the end of February, Keith is looking forward to returning to Metro Moncton. While some artists plan their touring schedules around family commitments or choose to work a rotation of so many weeks on the road followed by stints of time at home, Keith chooses to fully immerse himself in promoting his music. He simply wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Organizing hotels, wages and merchandise sales takes a lot of time and effort but I am not afraid to do that legwork myself. I have never been afraid of hard work and so it feels good to have that reward at the end of the day,” Keith says.

“Part of the promotion of my career involves spending a lot of time interacting with fans on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. I am very much an artistic kind of person and so building those relationships with my fans is another kind of release for me.”

Fans interested in staying current with Keith Harkin or wishing to drop him a line to say hello can follow the vocalist on Twitter at twitter.com/keithharkin.

Article published in the May 13, 2013 edition of the Times & Transcript

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There may be no way to stop country music legend Merle Haggard. And if he has his way, he is never going to stop.

As the man who brought the world “Okie From Muskogee,” “Mama Tried,” and dozens of other hits, the 76-year-old is considered one of the most important country music figures to come from the 1960s. His many musical accomplishments certainly support that statement.

Over the course of 65 albums, Haggard has launched 40 singles into the No. 1 position. He has earned two Grammy Awards, several Country Music Association nominations and in 1994, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Tack on a combined three millions plays of “Okie From Muskogee,” “Today I Started Loving You Again” and “Big City” and you’ve got the makings of a country music legend.

“When I hear the word ‘legend,’ all I hope is that people aren’t over-exaggerating the situation,” Haggard tells The Times & Transcript. “It certainly is great to be considered the way they do, though.”

Haggard was born in 1937 just outside of Bakersfield, Calif., and didn’t have the easiest upbringing. His father passed away when Haggard was only nine years old, sparking a rebellious streak of sorts in the youngster that would see him drift in and out of reform schools as he grew up. At the age of 20, Haggard was doing time in San Quentin Prison. When he was released in 1960, Haggard immersed himself in the Bakersfield country scene, which also spawned Buck Owens, and made the decision to pursue music as a career.

“Around 1960, I was wiring houses with my brother and eventually started working four nights a week playing music,” Haggard says. “That was on top of working the usual five days a week at my regular job until eventually, music got in the way of my job. Incidentally, I never went back to my day job.”

Many traditional country artists, including Haggard, are having little luck these days breaking through the seemingly impenetrable walls of country radio. In an interview with The Times & Transcript last month, Sammy Kershaw said, “A lot of people in country music today want to be anything but country,” which indeed is a hot-button issue for many country-music purists. They argue that without the likes of Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Sr., George Jones and, yes, Merle Haggard, country music would not have such strong roots.

Haggard admits that while much of today’s modern country music fails to appeal to him, he also recognizes that much has changed over the course of the last 20 years in the genre.

“There is a lot of what I’d call teenage noise that doesn’t appeal to an old guy like me in the least,” he says. “Kids have their own thing going on these days; I appreciate country music but not the same kind of country music that is popular. That is what they want now, however. Now that being said, there is a new kid on the block named Hunter Hayes who I think is doing a great job bringing country music into the present day.”

While some artists are inclined to scale back the scope of their touring efforts as they age, Haggard says that he anticipates this year being like many that preceded it, meaning there will be somewhere in the vicinity of 100 shows played. He continues to promote his 2011 record Working In Tennessee and shares that two of his next projects will pay tribute to Ernest Tubb and Bob Dylan.

“With Ernest, we went back and gathered up what we considered to be 15 of his best songs and tried to do them the same way that Ernest himself would have done. It is much the same premise for Bob Dylan but of course, we are putting a little more of a country spin on the songs.”

Asked if there are any imminent plans to scale back touring over the course of the next few years, Haggard laughs and says he doesn’t believe that he’ll be stopping anytime soon.

“It is no small feat to be playing 100 shows a year still but I have to do it,” he says. “Music keeps me young. If you’re in motion you try to stay in motion and if I sit down, I worry I am going to wind up dead. I play music out of necessity to stay alive. It helps me try to forget how old I am.”

Article published in the May 11, 2013 edition of the Times & Transcript

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Fredericton native David Myles may be a little more chipper than his usual self these days. Already arguably one of the friendliest musicians to hail from Atlantic Canada, Myles has a lot to smile about these days.

He has a brand-new record set to drop on Tuesday, just two days before his performance at La Caserne in the Dieppe Arts & Culture Centre on Thursday.

In The Nighttime is an ambitious double-disc undertaking, one disc of which is rooted in Myles’ well documented blend of folk and pop. The second disc is a six-song EP of contemporary pop produced by his hip-hop pal and multi-platinum selling artist Classified.

While the pairing between a romantic pop singer-songwriter and a hip-hop star might seem like a 21st century Odd Couple, there is a deep respect and collaborative spirit at the heart of the friendship between Myles and Classified.

That spirit has no doubt played a part in their song “Inner Ninja” which won the Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year last month. Appearing on Classified’s latest self-titled record, Myles part in the youngster-empowering anthem is a key one and perhaps one of the best examples of how well the duo works together.

“‘Inner Ninja’ being such a huge hit has been such a great surprise,” Myles said from his Halifax-area home last week. “It has definitely been an unbelievable trip, especially because the song keeps growing and is not stopping. As a songwriter, it’s a dream come true to have a big hit like this. You just want to stop, sit back and take it all in; I’ve been pinching myself quite a lot lately.”

Myles says that when he and Classified were writing and recording the song, his intuition told him that the duo was onto something great. Asked how he feels that his biggest hit to date is in the hip-hop realm, Myles express genuine gratitude that he even has a hit to talk about.

“I did feel that it was something special. Both of us knew that if people understood the whole premise of the song and realized that our intention regarding the song was authentic, it could be something a little musically different for both of us that could still work.

“I have always been very open with my musical interests. I didn’t know that I would ever have a hit, let alone guess that my first Juno would be for a rap recording. It is just something that is working and so I have embraced it. If the hook in a song is good enough, I am not going to worry about following the rules of traditional songwriting. I have spent a lot of my career trying to master the verse-chorus-verse style of songwriting because I love it. But this song has helped changed the way that I think about music and how I write,” Myles says.

Of course, Myles is no one-trick pony. A dynamic and charismatic live performer, all aspects of Myles’ personality shine through on In The Nighttime. Recorded in Toronto this past December with producer Aaron Davis, Myles says that he feels the record is a more than fine representation of where he is at as an artist.

“Making my new record was a tremendous experience. It was really about as ideal as it gets when you’re playing with other musicians. You go into the studio hoping that everyone is comfortable with one another and that you’ll get the best performances from them as a result of that. I feel it is important to give people some general direction but ultimately let the musicians do their own thing.”

While In The Nighttime is a wonderful addition to Myles catalogue, one of the surprising aspects of it is the inclusion of the second disc of primarily pop-oriented material. Admittedly, it is not the type of material that you might expect to hear from him, but it is something that works for him and works rather well at that.

He says that the idea to package In The Nighttime as a double-disc pack was a decision that came fairly late in the game.

“After ‘Inner Ninja’ was completed, Classified and I never really stopped working together and so we made this EP of six songs together. I had wondered what to do with the EP as I wanted to get these songs released but didn’t necessarily want to wait to release them either.

“So I made the decision to embrace the chaos and not worry about the marketing of the record. In The Nighttime is an authentic snapshot of where I am at in this moment of time. And really, that is every artist’s dream, to be able to show people where they are both artistically and musically. It might not have seemed quite as real if I packaged these two discs separately.”

Article published in the May 10, 2013 edition of the Times & Transcript

“I read the news today, oh boy.”

While these words might have been sung by The Beatles, Toronto band Enter The Haggis literally did read the news when it came to their new record The Modest Revolution. The songs on the album are completely ripped from the pages of The Globe & Mail’s March 30, 2012 edition.

Enter The Haggis multi-instrumentalist Trevor Lewington spoke with Here Magazine about the group’s wildly successful crowd-funding campaign and well as what inspired The Modest Revolution.

Who in the band came up with the idea to make a record based on events found in the newspaper on March 30, 2012?

It was I who came up with the idea but it wasn’t necessarily the first time that our music had been inspired by the news. In 2010, we took part in a songwriting workshop in Boston and were staying in the basement of a friends house. On the morning of the songwriting clinic, the area we were staying in was hit by severe flooding, the sort of pictures I had never seen with my own eyes. I suggested that we sequester ourselves and come up with songs based on our impressions of the flooding. Brian’s song The Flood made it onto the album that followed. Drawing inspiration from the headlines and our experiences that day ended up spawning the idea for basing an entire album on one issue of a newspaper.

Was it equally important for you guys to focus on the good news stories as heard on Can’t Trust The News opposed to only focusing on the darker side of the headlines?

It is the whole idea of the song Can’t Trust the News. If we get too focused on the negative headlines, it is easy to feel a sense of despair. There was less real estate given to positive stories in the newspaper from the specific day that we based the album on, but luckily you don’t need more than a few words to inspire a song.

You raised more than three times the original amount that you were looking to get from your Kickstarter campaign. That must be an incredible feeling to have had your campaign be so successful.

It is still hard for us to believe the success of the campaign. Every last penny was invested into the record from studio time to set design for our supporting tour. Crowd funding has been great for us, as it has allowed us to continue to do what we love without dealing with a record label.

Article published in the May 9, 2013 edition of Here Magazine

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